PNLV Blog

February blog post from PPL Electric Utilities

Feb

27

What does reliable electric service mean to you?

If you own a business, it means that your computers, machinery, or cash registers can always be counted on to work when things are busiest.

At home, it means your personal space can always be relied on to be well-lit and comfortable, and the electricity-driven items that make your life easier are always doing their jobs when you want them.

Reliable electricity even makes a difference when you’re out on the road. It powers streetlights, traffic lights and crossing signals that make travel safe and orderly.

Strong electric service touches just about everything you do, everywhere you go. That’s why we’re proud to say that PPL Electric Utilities’ reliability in 2017 was our strongest on record.

In recent years we’ve been installing smart grid technology, using data analytics to improve equipment maintenance and replacement, replacing older poles and equipment with strong newer models, doing comprehensive clearing of vegetation along power lines, installing better protection against damage from lightning strikes, and more.

The result? Our customers experienced 550,000 fewer interruptions in 2017 than they did 10 years before. In fact, PPL Electric Utilities customers now experience some of the best electric reliability in the country: PPL ranks in the top 11 percent of utilities nationwide in terms of the lowest average number of outages per customer.

You might have noticed this reliability during the extreme cold of January. Our system handled high demand and cold temperatures without missing a beat. That’s our goal any time extreme weather arrives, whether it’s winter cold or summer heat

Or, you might have noticed it on 1/12/2018, shortly after 6:15 a.m. That’s when one of the 4,600 devices that make up our smart grid system noticed an outage in the West Allentown area and automatically rerouted power around it. 107 of 331affected customers were back online within 179 seconds minutes.

What’s next? Well, we continue to invest in improving our grid. There are always places where we can improve – places where the system can be strengthened or made more flexible. We continue to trim trees, rebuild power lines, replace old poles, and more.

We’ll never be able to completely banish outages – especially after high winds, ice storms or other natural menaces.

But we’re committed to continued improvement. Because we know that whether you’re at work, at home or on the road, you count on us to deliver.